The government is close to finalising proposed legislation that it says will boost the ability of law enforcement agencies to access to communications using encrypted services.

“Legislation to enable Australian law enforcement and security agencies to adapt to the challenges posed by ubiquitous encryption is in an advanced stage of development,” a spokesperson for the Attorney-General’s Department told Computerworld.

“The government anticipates that it will be introduced in the first quarter of this year,” the spokesperson said.

Last year, then-attorney-general Senator George Brandis indicated that the government was planning to unveil the legislation before the end of 2017 during the spring sittings of parliament.

The Attorney-General’s Department spokesperson didn’t detail the reason for the delay in the introduction of a bill.

In a July 2017 Sky News interview Brandis said that governments and law enforcement and intelligence agencies “have always had the lawful capacity to intercept information” and that “there has always been an obligation on citizens, including corporate citizens, to assist police, in law enforcement matters.”

“So what we’re asking the ISPs and the device makers to do is to accept the same obligation that already applies under existing law, also applies to the new technologies,” Brandis said.

The introduction of legislation to counter the use of encrypted communications services has been foreshadowed by the government for a number of years.

“Rapid developments in communications technology present both opportunities and challenges for our agencies,” Turnbull said in a national security statement delivered in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris.

Australia’s national cyber security strategy, launched in April 2016, noted that there is “a growing trend for groups and individuals to use encryption to hide illegal activity and motivate others to join their cause”.

“The Government supports the use of encryption to protect sensitive personal, commercial and government information,” the strategy states.

“However, encryption presents challenges for Australian law enforcement and security agencies in continuing to access data essential for investigations to keep all Australians safe and secure. Government agencies are working to address these challenges.”

Brandis in 2017 said Australia would seek to lead discussions among the nations of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership — comprising Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and New Zealand — on “thwarting the encryption of terrorist messaging”.

Turnbull has indicated the government has a fairly narrow definition of ‘backdoor’, however: It’s “typically a flaw in a software program that perhaps the... developer of the software program is not aware of and that somebody who knows about it can exploit,” the PM said at a July 2017 press conference.

The government has not yet revealed a great deal of detail about how the proposed legislation will function and is yet to spell out how any new laws would deal with end-to-end encryption.

End-to-end encryption services are intended — barring design or implementation flaws — to resist decryption by both the service providers and third parties.

New laws will compel tech companies “provide assistance to the police to enable them to have access to the information pursuant to a warrant,” Turnbull told the press conference.

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